Laborers in the Vineyard
What do you think of this Gospel?
Does it make you feel upset, that the landowner is not being fair?
This Gospel makes many people think Matthew must have made a mistake in writing it down….. because Jesus would never be so unfair.
But this parable reminds me of what I see when I drive around.
I drive by the parking lots of Home Depot and Wawa and 7-11 and Dash Inn stores and see men of all ages waiting to be hired.
I know most are probably undocumented…. And I am sure many have wives and children here or in another country they support, or try to.
Work means life to them…. any work and any pay.
Can you imagine how they feel as the hours tick by and no one hires them?
Or can you imagine their joy when someone does?
Why? Because even for a few hours, or even one, they would have job security.
You see, my brothers and sisters, what the landowner paid the vineyard workers was, yes, the wage he promised.
But what they -- and we -- could not see, because they were grasping at some perception of injustice done to them, was job security that day….. the diminishment of anxiety for a few hours.
The day workers could be joyous with relief and generous if they chose to be, because they knew with almost absolute certainty they would be paid at the end of the workday.
They had job security.
When you get your paycheck, Social Security or retirement check, what do you have?
Security.
Can you put yourself into the shoes of the men who wait at Home Depot and in other parking lots and worry and long for job security for just one day?
Or a half a day, or an hour?
Can you imagine their anxiety?
After seeing the poor waiting throughout the day, day after day, for enough work to sustain them and their families for just another day….. I think this Gospel is telling us who have job security to be as generous as the landowner in thoughts, words and deeds.
To offer job security or something like it to our neighbor.
This is not a parable about justice to the day workers because the landowner paid what he promised to each worker, and it was what the worker agreed to.
This is not about injustice to us 2,000 years later.
It is about generosity and love for that neighbor in front of us who does not have house, home, work, food for their children, and perhaps not even safety.
This Sunday, Jesus asks us to be generous and to think not only of ourselves and what we think we deserve.
Because in these times, it could be any one of us standing in front of Home Depot.
Can you think of your anxiety as the drivers in their pickup trucks choose others but not you?
What it would be like to be without the security you have waiting for you, and I, after Mass?
Maybe you have lived through this.
Either way, let us be generous and share the reality of the job security we have with those who do not expect it, but hope, with all their hearts.
And so remember this parable the next time the debate over proposed Federal or State or County budgets comes up that excludes people from the benefits of living in a democracy -- security, a roof over one's head, enough to feed one's family and to care for them, an education, a job.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”
Perhaps we would have a better world if we were to adopt some of God’s ways.
After all, “the Lord is just in all his ways” …..and that is something which cannot be said of all our ways.